A couple emerged from the woods
as my wife and I
ate fast food from a paper bag
at a picnic table
next to the Kankakee River.

“Are you Birders too?” they asked.

(In hindsight, it must’ve been
the lack of fishing poles.)
I took a big bite of food,
hoping my wife would answer,
as I had no clue what a Birder was.

They had binoculars
dangling from their necks,
notebooks in-hand,
and were reading a description of a bird call
they thought they heard nearby.

I wondered what the description
of a bird call looked like in print.
5 years later and 585 miles away,
I anticipate my wife and I
will soon find out.

We happen to be moving to
a Bird Sanctuary
on Signal Mountain,
and I can’t think of a better time
to walk around town with binoculars

dangling from our necks,
notebooks in-hand,
trying to match the sound of a bird call
to its mysteriously printed counterpart
while asking the neighbors,

“Are you Birders too?”